Meter in English: A Critical EngagementDavid Baker Renowned poets and experts in metrics respond to Robert Wallace's pivotal essay, Meter in English, which clarifies and simplifies methods of studying poetry. |
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Page xx
... examples of open - form poetry existed in English before this time — the King James Psalms , a poem here and there by Christopher Smart or William Blake . These are rare examples , though , isolated exceptions to the stead- fast ...
... examples of open - form poetry existed in English before this time — the King James Psalms , a poem here and there by Christopher Smart or William Blake . These are rare examples , though , isolated exceptions to the stead- fast ...
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... example from about 1500 is And I in my bed | again The musical notation in the manuscript makes the foot unmistak- able . Instances exist even in the verse of poets as syllabically rigor- ous as Pope . The naturalness of the anapest ...
... example from about 1500 is And I in my bed | again The musical notation in the manuscript makes the foot unmistak- able . Instances exist even in the verse of poets as syllabically rigor- ous as Pope . The naturalness of the anapest ...
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... examples . " Poetry " has claim to be the most famous poem in syllabics in English — if it is in syllabics at all , which is a question open to a good deal of doubt . Both poems were written , as appears to have been Moore's prac- tice ...
... examples . " Poetry " has claim to be the most famous poem in syllabics in English — if it is in syllabics at all , which is a question open to a good deal of doubt . Both poems were written , as appears to have been Moore's prac- tice ...
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... examples that reflect this obvious sense of the term . Gross ( 37-38 , 187 ) cites the opening eighteen lines of " The Waste Land " as four - beat accen- tual meter . As " even in Old English verse we encounter lines of three or five ...
... examples that reflect this obvious sense of the term . Gross ( 37-38 , 187 ) cites the opening eighteen lines of " The Waste Land " as four - beat accen- tual meter . As " even in Old English verse we encounter lines of three or five ...
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... example Meredith's " About Opera . " Williams comments that the lines all have five stresses , and he confirms my marking of " on " as stressed in line 12. ( Line 3 might optionally be scanned with anapest and iamb in the third and ...
... example Meredith's " About Opera . " Williams comments that the lines all have five stresses , and he confirms my marking of " on " as stressed in line 12. ( Line 3 might optionally be scanned with anapest and iamb in the third and ...
Contents
3 | |
43 | |
45 | |
A DEFENSE OF THE NONIAMBIC METERS | 59 |
METERMAKING ARGUMENTS | 75 |
A RESPONSE TO ROBERT WALLACE | 97 |
SOME RESPONSES TO ROBERT WALLACE | 109 |
A NEW FOOTING | 125 |
VERSE VS PROSEPROSODY VS METER | 249 |
METRICS AND PEDAGOGICAL ECONOMY | 265 |
TWO LETTERS | 279 |
A RESPONSE TO ROBERT WALLACE | 283 |
PART THREE | 293 |
COMPLETING THE CIRCLE | 295 |
BIBLIOGRAPHY | 351 |
CONTRIBUTORS | 357 |
METRICAL PLEASURES OF OUR TIME | 151 |
STRENGTH IN DIVERSITY | 169 |
METER AND THE FORTUNES OF THE NUMERICAL IMAGINATION | 197 |
STAUNCH METER GREAT SONG | 221 |
INDEX OF PROPOSAL DISCUSSIONS | 361 |
INDEX OF AUTHORS | 363 |
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Common terms and phrases
accentual meter accentual verse accentual-syllabic meter accentual-syllabic verse amphibrach anacrusis anapestic Anapests and dactyls basis for meter caesura century conventional critical dactylic dactylic meters discussion double-iamb e-s ending English meter English verse example exist in English extra-syllable ending foot in English four-stress free verse Gioia Greek green thought hear iamb iambic line iambic meter iambic norm iambic pentameter iambic verse Jeffers Jespersen lables language levels of stress linguistic Marianne Moore measure meter in English metrical stress metrists Moore's Nims non-iambic meters number of syllables pattern poem poem's poetic poets Professor Wallace proposition prose prosodists pyrrhic foot quantity reader regular rhyme rhythm rhythmic Robert Wallace Robinson Jeffers Saintsbury scansion seems sense sound speech stress spondee stanza stressed and unstressed strong stresses syllabic meter syllabic verse syllable count syllables tetrameter Timothy Steele tion traditional trochaic trochaic meter trochee unstressed syllables variation versification words writing
Popular passages
Page v - The sound must seem an echo to the sense : Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows ; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar : When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow ; Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.
Page 311 - Leave me, O love which reachest but to dust, And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things. Grow rich in that which never taketh rust: Whatever fades but fading pleasure brings. Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be; Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light That doth both shine and give us sight to see.
Page 49 - I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine.
Page 127 - Jesus me, the last delinquent, Deems the profanest. Man disavows, and Deity disowns me ; Hell might afford my miseries a shelter ; Therefore Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all Bolted against me.
Page 276 - DISCIPLINE THROW away Thy rod, Throw away Thy wrath : 0 my God, Take the gentle path. For my heart's desire Unto Thine is bent : 1 aspire To a full consent. Not a word or look I affect to own, But by book, And Thy book alone.
Page 333 - Why so pale and wan, fond lover? Prithee, why so pale? Will, when looking well can't move her, Looking ill prevail? Prithee, why so pale?
Page 20 - Christabel is not, properly speaking, irregular, though it may seem so from its being founded on a new principle : namely, that of counting in each line the accents, not the syllables.
Page 158 - I employ sprung rhythm at all? because it is the nearest to the rhythm of prose, that is the native and natural rhythm of speech...